culture: high, low, and indeterminant

High Culture: Last night I went to see a production of Cymbeline at Ye Olde Universitee. It was alright. I’ve not been to too many plays here, despite feeling like I have some responsibility to support the department, and anyway, cheap entertainment. Cymbeline is a fairly tough play to pull off as it has an (even moreso than usual in Shakespeare) unbelievable ending and fairly choppy action, and an apparently unrelated set of stories. This group did a good job of minimizing the complications in order to make a reasonably coherent story; and the set was great. The actors varied considerably; considering they were all students, they did a reasonable job. Iachimo was superb (and a non-theatre major, at that); I’d expect more from an Innogen. And so it goes. It was good times for a couple hours. I am a little bit of a Shakespeare snob as I’ve been privileged enough to see some of the best productionsaround. I like to think this makes me a better critic, though who knows; I’m certainly no theatre sophisticate. Anyway, it was fun, and props to the Dept for taking on a lesser-known play.
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Low Culture: I am becoming a complete sucker for The Amazing Race. It is so bad. But honestly, I cannot wait to see who wins. I suspect I am absolutely the target audience for this particular show: well-travelled enough to groan in sympathy as they lug their backpacks around at a frantic pace, not well-travelled enough to be able to catch production flaws in every country that they visit.
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Indeterminant: I’ve just finished the last of the Complete Stories of Lord Peter Wimsey. Oh, Dorothy Sayers, I know you thought it was your best work but why oh why did you spend so much time on that damned translation of Dante? I want more Wimsey!